K: Can we seek God through observation? I don’t quite know what it means, the
meaning of that word, but I think the gentleman means, can we seek God or can
we find God through the observation of nature, of man, of the beauty of the
Earth, the beauty of a cloud, the beauty of a face, the laughter of a child, through
observing all this marvel of life? Is that the question, sir?
You will never find it if you seek it. Do you understand the answer? You will
never find it if you run after it. You will never find it if your intention in seeing
the beauty of the Earth, in seeing the light on the water, in seeing the perfect line
of a mountain, if you hope through seeing to find that. You will never find it
because you cannot find that through anything: through your sacrifice, through
your worship, through your meditation, through your virtue. You will never
come upon it because your motive is all wrong, because you want to find that not
in living but somewhere else. You must establish right relationship with people
first. Which means you must know what it means to love, what it means to be
compassionate, what it means to be generous when you have a great deal, what it
means to share with another the little that you have, to establish marvelous order
in daily living. Then if you have established that order, which is freedom, there is
no seeking.
When you use the word seek, there are several things involved in the meaning
of that word. When you are seeking, you hope to find something. And how do
you know when you have found it? Please listen to this, you who are all seekers
after truth or experimenters after truth, you who are always talking about
seeking. In seeking there are several things involved: there is the seeker and the
thing that he seeks after. When the seeker finds what he thinks is truth, is God, is
enlightenment, is heaven, or whatever you may call it, he must be able to
recognize it. Right? Recognition implies previous knowledge. Right? Otherwise
you can’t recognize. I can’t recognize you if I haven’t met you before. Therefore
when I say this is truth, I have already known it, and therefore it is not truth.
So a person who is seeking truth lives a life of hypocrisy, because his truth is
the projection of his memory, of his desires, of his intention to find something
other than what is, some formula. So seeking implies duality—the one who seeks
and the thing sought after—and where there is duality there is conflict. And that
is a waste of energy. So you can never find it, you can never invite it. The god
that you call “God” is your invention; it’s not God. The thing made by hand in
the temple, in an image, is not God; the thing made by your thought is not God,
is not truth. And that’s what you are living on, on the image made by the hand or
by the mind.
If you really inquire into whether there is or is not something that is timeless,
not within the field of thought, then you must understand the whole nature of
thought. But by merely asking, “Will I find God?” you will find him, because
what you want you will find, but it won’t be true, it won’t be the real. It’s like a
hungry man wanting food; he will find some kind of food. You see, if you have
no love in your heart, but have money in your heart, deception in your heart, if
you are competitive, brutal, violent, you will invent something which will be the
opposite of the real.
michael s
(Michael S)
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